The On-Off Fruit Machine Scam

The vast majority of slot and fruit machine players are of course honest hard working people, who are prepared to put their own hard earned money at risk when playing any type of gaming machine, and if they lose then so be it but if they win even better!

However, the lure of fast easy money has often been too much of a temptation for some players and some of them are prepared to stray over to the dark side and will try anything they can think of to cheat a slot or fruit machine.

Over in the UK, there are all kinds of gaming machines you can play, some to the most readily accessible gaming machines found in all manner of land based venues are fruit machines, which work very differently to slot machines found in casinos.

The way in which fruit machines have been designed is that over one full cycle of spins, which could be tens or even thousands of spins they will achieve their preset long term expected payout percentage.

Unlike casino slot machines which are completely random, fruit machines are designed to be random but in such a way that no matter how you play them as soon as they are nearing the end of one playing cycle they will do whatever they need to do to achieve their preset payout percentages.

That has led to all manner of different playing strategies and systems that many players will adopt to get the best winning chances when playing those slot machines however it has also led to some quite ingenious ways for a player to cheat those type of gaming machines too.

A fruit machines has something known as a long term memory built into its CPU which allows for the fruit machine to know here it is up to in each cycle and will then be able to work out when it needs to payout and when to achieve it preset payout percentage.

It also has a short term memory too, which allows for example for a fruit machine operator to audit the machine and allows the fruit machine to remember at what stage in its cycle it was is up to. However, it has been discovered that there is a way of interrupting some fruit machines short term memory which enables a player to achieve multiple winning payouts.

I actually saw this scam being performed in a pub, I was sat drinking in with a friend, and what it entails is that a slot cheat simply plays the fruit machine in the normal way until they reach a point in time on their playing session when they spin in a large valued winning payout.

The slot cheat will then wait until the winnings are credited to their credit meter and will turn the fruit machine off and on again. That somehow interrupts the short term memory of the fruit machine as it thinks that high valued winning payout wasn’t paid out and will then pay it out again!

By constantly turning off then back on again a fruit machine when it has just paid out at slot cheat can empty that slot machine of all money very quickly, as the machine will keep on paying out that winning payout when it is turned back on again, believing it didn’t pay it out in the first place, which obviously it did!

Sadly Cryptologic in their original incarnation are no more, for they recently sold their entire operation to another company, however the new owners have chosen to continue offering their range of slots to players and [...]